No. 48 Fall 1973 1973 Trieste Film Festival The jury of the 11th International Science Fict'in Film Festival at Trieste, held during the week of July 7-14, has awarded the Golden Asteroid to the American film Schlock by John Landis with the citation: “For the acute satire and the use it has made of sf to epitomize the point of view of today’s young generation on the affluent society.” The picture is a comic tale of a missing link, wakened from a 20 million year sleep, who spreads disaster in a small American town, until he is done in by beauty, a la King Kong. Susan Hampshire was awarded the Silver Asteroid as the best actress for the Belgian film Malpertius in which she plays three different roles. The story centers around Greek gods, who are sewn into human skins by a mad scientist, played with zest by Orson Welles. John Steiner received the same award as best actor for the Italian film Rads 1001 in which he played a man existing after a worldwide holocaust. Special jury awards went to the feature film La Planete Sauvage by Rene Laloux (France), which already won a prize at Cannes; and to the animated short film Tup-Tup (Yugoslav-Italian production) which had a man running amok and destroying the world due to noises keeping him awake. The Polish film Korytarz (The Corridor) received the Golden Seal of the city of Trieste. The story deals with a man in a sort of moving corridor playing out his life to a human audience. The short film Isabelle et la Locomotive a Vapeur by Patrick Ledoux (Belgium), about a girl in love with a locomotive, was given a special mention by the jury. A special Gold Medal was awarded to Fritz Lang for the poetic and social conception he brought to science fiction in such pictures as Metropolis and Lady on the Moon. His Metropolis was shown in the retrospective section. The jury wanted to give John Landis an actor award for his own role as the Schlockthropus, however festival rules prevent giving more than one award to any picture. This year’s festival was characterized by an almost total lack of fans. An Italian convention should have taken place in Trieste during the same period but had to be cancelled and will probably take place in Milan towards the end of the year. Film selection was far better than usual—horror and draculalike movies were practically absent—although there could have been more entries. The only other films shown were The Third After the Sun (Bulgarian), three stories of time travel and men from another planet; Baba Yaga by Corrado Farina (Italian), based on the comic strip by Guido Crepax, and Akee Bororo (Operation Bororo) by Otakar Fuka (Czechoslovakia) the story of aliens and humans competing for the secret of a cure-all drug. Unfortunately Soylent Green was also absent. It The International Scene seems that the only available copy in Europe was in Israel at the time and while it should SF IN FRENCH: THE FIRST SCIENCE FICTION FILMS have been in Trieste, apparently no effort was made to get it in time. The jury consisted of Nelly Kaplan, French filmmaker; David Overby, an American by Mark Purcell freelance critic; Ricardo Salvat, Spanish critic; Luciano Budigna, Italian journalist; and Lajos The natural film medium for fantasy and for what film people usually consider sf, is Matos, Hungarian scientist and filmmaker. of course animation. Not only is the cartoon, any cartoon, a complete ‘secondary world’ —Gian Paolo Cossato from the first drawn frame; but animation has an abstract logic to its narration that suits the illustration of pure theory. Historically, movie cartoons and special effects trickery have ROGER DELGADO emphasized ‘fantasy’ much more than intellectual theory, but of course the same thing is even more true of realistic actors’ films. It is still not generally realized, incidentally, that British actor Roger Delgado, star of the BBC TV series Dr. Who, was killed recently in the landmark American sf films are basically animation: Lost World, 1925; the two 1933 a highway accident near Nevsehir, Turkey. The 53 year old actor was on his way to a film Kongs; 2001. location at the time. Bom in London of French and Spanish parents, Mr. Delgado began his The first significant film director was an animator, an illusionist, and by a logical stage career in 1938 and entered films and television in 1950. progression, a maker of filmed sf. This was (Marie-) Georges-Jean Melies, 1861-1938. Melies began his career in Paris as an ‘illusioniste,’ a professional magician. Like the famous SPACE MEDALS The International Numismatic Agency has been appointed exclusive American who renamed himself Houdini, he worked in the big-show tradition of the great distributors for the 13 space medals minted by the L. G. Balfour Company of 19th century Frenchman, Robert Houdin. Melies bought Houdin’s own theater to stage his Massachusetts. The medals were made for distribution to NASA and were not previously shows. The early cinematograph was a natural tool for Melies to employ; and like that later available to the public. Minted in sterling silver and pewter, the medals were designed from magician, Orson Welles, he became fascinated with what the camera could do. Like Welles sketches and photographs approved by NASA artists and technicians. They are minted in and unlike Houdin (who appeared in silent serials as a star), Melies realized that filming high relief and measure 1 3/16 inches in diameter. They are struck in a new could be the ‘act’ itself, not simply a means of recording or aiding his stage shows. three-dimensional relief technique developed by Balfour, which stresses the carved contours His most active production period was 1896-1910. So Melies goes back to the period of the design elements. The International Numismatic Agency is located at 96 Prince Street when the ‘motion’ picture was a series of posed stage tableaux; and then his career becomes in New York City. part of the movies’ first artistically important decade, one of several periods when the French have been world leaders in the industry. The filmography that I quote, Georges Sadoul’s (see below), numbers Melies’ films by these tableaux alone, not as separate LUNA Monthly ADVERTISING RATES: story-films; but even so, in his first fifteen years, his output number went over 1500. Even Editor: Ann F. Dietz Full page $8.00 Quarter page $2.50 counting some early staged ‘newsreels,’ Melies had an enormous need for film material. He Published monthly by Frank & Ann Dietz, Half page 4.50 Eighth page 1.50 ransacked the popular Parisian theater, his own first of all. The popular interest in illusion, 655 Orchard Street, Oradell, N.J. 07649 Classified advertising: 2d per word travel, the spectacular, led him to the obvious fantasy sources of mythology and the novels Half-tone copy: $5.00 additional DEADLINE FOR MATERIAL: of Jules Verne. As they had appealed to Verne’s original reading public, their plots gave First Friday of preceding month Rates are for camera-ready copy. Please request Melies’ audience both the sense of travel and the excitement of the new industrial special LUNA layout sheets for setting up copy. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Ads requiring preparation should be submitted technology: submarines, balloons, planes, automobiles. 40tf per copy, 50tf on newsstand in advance for quotation. For'a long time the Verne-Melies film most commonly seen over here was a print of $4.00 per year Third Class Mail worldwide the 1902 Voyage to the Moon; But Melies did other adaptations, like a 1907 20,000 5.00 per year First Class Mail COPY SIZE: (inside margins) 6.75 per year outside North America via Full page 6” 9" Leagues Under the Sea. In his one-reeler, the moon rocket hits the man in the moon in the 9" or 6” x 4%" First Class Mail Half page 3” eye; and our lunar satellite contains a chorus line of Parisian moon-maids. With this level of Subscriptions requiring special invoicing Quarter page 3" 4%" scientific interest, there is obviously no point in separating the Verne films from Melies’ Eighth page 2%" 50(f additional 3" other pictures as ‘science fiction.’ The point the reader might miss, however, is that later, Microfilm Edition: $17.00 per reel (year) OTHER LUNA PUBLICATIONS: more sober pictures, not gagged up and with the hero properly airsuited, do not Back issues: #1 to 13 - 75d each, #14 to LUNA' Editor: Franklin M. Dietz Jr. 37 - 50tf each, #38 to current - 4(M each Speech Transcripts Published Irregularly automatically become more ‘scientific’ than Melies’ little farces. These later films have only adopted a surface realism whereas he employed a surface fantasy. And what the modem All checks and money orders must be payable to LUNA Annual Editor: Ann F. Dietz Franklin M. Dietz Jr. only Bibliography To be published audience considers science-fictional, is still Melies’ type of technical trickery. The so-called sf element in the James Bond films is Ken Adam’s sets. (Adam’s sets were even used to carry US ISSN 0024-7375 Member: Science Fiction Publishers Association much of the thematic burden in the recent mystery film, Sleuth, somewhat at the expense OVERSEAS SUBSCRIPTION RATES for LUNA Monthly via Airmail/FC through agents: of Anthony Shaffer’s wonderful dialogue.) My point is, the Melies ‘tradition’ extends far AUSTRALIA A$6.00 beyond the short animation film that Disney eventually commercialized over here just as Gary Mason, GPO Box 1583, Adelaide, S.A. 5001, Australia sound came into the theaters. The Busby Berkeley type of musical number and effect, the CONTINENTAL DM20 feature fantasy film as a genre, even the important background animation or illusionist sets Mario B. Bosnyak, 1000 BERLIN 62, Merseburger Str. 3, W. Germany GREAT BRITAIN 240p in Butch Cassidy or in MGM specials as far back as the 1925 Ben Hur; the whole special Gerald Bishop, 10 Marlborough Road, Exeter EX2 4JT, England effects line of development in films proceeds from Melies’ early one-reelers. JAPAN ¥2800 These little French films had international distribution and wide artistic impact. But Takumi Shibano, 1-14-10, O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, Japan economically Melies’ career underwent the classic curve of the independent pre-corporation SCANDINAVIA S Kr30 arts entrepreneur: first, popularity; then expansion, with its riches but with its concomitant Per Insulander, Midsommarvagen 33, 126 35, Hagersten, Sweden expenses in production and distribution. As the creator becomes more ambitious or more 2 3 productive, he plows his old profits back into the operation to keep it alive. Eventually GOLD ON GOLD* initial costs demand that he turn to some outside financier; or changing conditions or some by Horace L. Gold failed investment shoot down his gross, but leave him holding the bag, i.e., the production-distribution setup he himself established. The biographies of Griffith and Mark I was born the year World War I started, graduated the year Hitler and Roosevelt were Twain tell a similar business story. elected, got married the day World War II began, had a son 20 days after Pearl Harbor, For Melies, the breakdown year seems to have been 1911. He kept filming until WWI, started Galaxy just minutes ahead of the Korean War, got divorced the year of the Sputnik, and his technical bankruptcy occurred in 1923; but in 1911 his brother and American and remarried the year of the big buildup in Vietnam. distributor, Gaston, began touring California and then the Pacific, spending his brother’s In other words, I am a historical Typhoid Mary and should be paid by the U.N. a grosses on unsuccessful cowboy and travel films. The same year, Georges in Paris sold his million—all right, a hundred thousand dollars—a year not to make any more major moves. distribution rights to Charles Path£, who immediately began ‘improving’ the films as MGM While I’m waiting for that, let me tell you some lesser details of my professional life. did Keaton’s, after Buster brought his production unit onto the Metro lot. Melies ended I discovered science fiction when I was 13—a magazine with monstrous ants and a running a toy stand in Paris. He seems to have retained his moral dignity and amiability to spastic man looking up at a girl in a bronze bra and filmy skirt, tenderly held in the the end. mandibles of one of the bugs. It was beautiful, so beautiful that I decided then and there to His career is automatically rehashed in every standard film history like Arthur become an sf writer. As for not deciding to become an sf artist, how could a 13-year-old Knight’s Liveliest Art. Of his many films, paper prints of his 1903-09 output were deposited kid—or anyone else, for that matter—compete with the peerless Frank R. Paul? at the Library of Congress; and recently these have been the source for reproducing some of So I studied English and the sciences, wrote stories for the school magazine and, as them for the audio-visual market. Public libraries’ film collections usually have some now. I’ve said, graduated just before Hitler and Roosevelt. I wrote and wrote—thousands and Once you see a few of these prints, you may want to go beyond th?, shorter accounts in the thousands of words that—well, I’d walk to the post office to mail them and come back to film histories or in appreciations like mine. Try Vol. I (1961) of Seghers’ famous series, find a rejection slip waiting for me at home. I never could figure out how the editors did “Cinema d’aujourd’hui,” the Sadoul book I mentioned above. This text has a huge that. filmography, enough illustrations (including the first filmed commercial!—1898, with a Then I started to bring manuscripts to the editors instead of mailing them. I got them young girl and a wine bottle), a life, testimonials, letters and some descriptions of his studio back even faster that way. But I persevered—and one day I brought a story to a wonderful operations. old man named T. O’Connor Sloane. He got dangerously excited about it for a mem of 82—but he said it was much too good for Amazing Stories. So he took it and me upstairs to Have You Read? the editor of the company’s prestige magazine, The Delineator, and demanded that it be read. I got it back when I returned home. I think it arrived before I did. Next month The Asimov, Isaac “My Amusement Park of the Magazine, June, p.239; Same. Top of the Delineator folded. I immediately saw the connection but I wanted to sell that story and Future.” Seventeen, July p.65+ News, June p.302-3 brought it back to Dr. Sloane. He maintained that it was too good for his magazine and Bester, Alfred “PW Interviews Robert Michener, Charles “Nantucket Gothic” refused to buy it. Heinlein.” Publishers Weekly, July 2, (Dracula play) Newsweek, July 16, p.80 So I never sold that story because Amazing was the only sf magazine at that time, and p.44-5 Miller, Edwin “High-flying Balladeer” (Neil I lost the story somehow. I can’t tell you if it was all that good, but maybe you can judge by Calder, Iain “14,000 Enquirer Readers Diamond in Jonathan Livingston Seagull what I remember of it. In it, I manfully exposed the miscreants who were exploiting the Write in Support of Reviving ‘Star movie) Seventeen, July, p.l00-l+ slave labor in the mines of Venus, and told of the revolt that freed the poor Earthlings. Trek’ ” National Enquirer, July 1, p.14 Platt, Charles “So You’re Immortal—So Now if that story was too good for Amazing, can you imagine what the rejects were Edwing, Don “A Mad Look at Tarzan.” What?” Harper’s, June p.9 like? Mad Magazine, Sept, p.26-9 Sagan, Carl “Of Mars, Martians and Mariner Well, I was 18 then and not too easily discouraged. I went on writing. My parents Fallon, Beth “Who’s Zoo in a Long Line of 9.” Horizon, Summer, p.26-37 were vociferously against it. How, they wanted to know, could anyone make a living putting Moviegoers” (Planet of the Apes series) Sheward, Virginia “At Home with the black marks on white paper? So I wrote and worked at any job I could find, and there New York Daily News, July 13 p.52 Addams Family” (Charles Addams) weren’t many, because this was at the bottom of the Great Depression. I remember being a Farrell, Patricia “The Amazing Mr. Holiday, March/April, p.30-1+ busboy in a fancy place called Roadside Rest. I was interviewed by three Rumanian Asimov.” Writer’s Digest, July, p.20-2 Stoker, Bram “Dracula’s Guest” (story) brothers, who owned it, and, though I didn’t know it, I was hired because there was nobody Gatewood, Worth “We’re Witcha, Hilda, The Times Saturday Review, Dec. 23, else around. So I worked from 10 in the morning to 2 the next morning—and then had to Broomsticks Away!” (Broom Hilda at p.5 walk home because the buses stopped running at midnight. It was a 7-mile walk and I was Comicon) New York Daily News, July 6, Wansell, Geoffrey “A Shock Horror pooped. But I was there at 10 the next morning, ready to put in another 16-hour day. Did I p.28 Success” (Hammer Films) London mention that I worked for the waiters, seven of them, and each gave me a quarter, or a “Japan: Total Submersion?” (Submersible Times, Dec. 16 grand total of $1.75? Japan by Sakyo Komatsu) Newsweek, But the brothers were there already and I was told to come into the office, where July 16, p.40+ they unanimously told me I couldn’t work there anymore. But why, I asked. Because, they “Joust Folks” (SCA tournament) New said, you are a writer, an artist, and we couldn’t stand the thought of a writer being a York Times, July 6, p.6 busboy. But you’re not paying me, I argued, the waiters are—and besides, I’ve never sold a Kaufman, Michael T. “King Kong Is Recast story, so how can I be called a writer? They were Rumanianly adamant, though I begged, for a Tourist Show” New York Times, pleaded, cajoled. I went home in despair—and found a letter from someone named Desmond July 26, p.39 Hall awaiting me. It was on Street & Smith stationery—and it said that he was happy to Le Guin, Ursula K. “In Defense of Fantasy” (National Book Award ^Adapted from a talk at the Pinckard’s Monthly Science Fiction Salon, July 1972. Edited acceptance remarks) Horn Book by Paul Walker 4 5 inform me that my latest story had been accepted for Astounding Stories'. A check would went over so well that I followed with the same reporter-detective hero in “Problem in be arriving soon! Murder,” the search for a mass murderer who left legs and arms in garbage cans everyday I showed my parents the letter. They were unconvinced. After all, how much could a but Sunday; the limbs turned out to have never been alive—yet, to satisfy the bullying police story bring? I didn’t know. The letter didn’t say, only that Mr. Hall was cutting 1500 words commissioner and the panicked public, a murderer had to be found. The hero took the last from it. I told my parents that brought the wordage to 19,500—and if they paid a cent a experiment, an almost but not quite complete body from the vat, dressed it, took it through word, it would be $195, or $97.50 for half a cent. They scoffed. But the check arrived in a the cordon in a hearse, wrote a suicide note for the corpse that had never lived, shot it, and week or so—and it was for an astounding $195! I suddenly became a big man in my family’s the resulting scoop built up the commissioner for a shoo-in as governor. eyes, a 20-year-old writer! (Funny how awful an sf story sounds when condensed. I remember being backed into I went to meet Mr. Hall, who immediately put me on a first-name basis, and said he describing one at a party: “There are these giant brains in glassite domes in the Arctic, and wanted to buy more material from me. So I moved from Far Rockaway to Greenwich they belong to aliens who know the entire history of the earth because they’re immortal—” Village, just ten minutes walk from Street & Smith. It was wonderful. I sold half a dozen The process was so embarrassing that I never did write that story.) stories to Des in pretty short order. He told me it was impossible to make a living writing I was shuffling through the rain one day toward Street & Smith without an idea in my science fiction and urged me to diversify. But, first, I didn’t know how, and, second, it was head except a subvocal song about walking... No, wait a minute. I have to tell you how sf I wanted to write. come I started writing under my own name. After my turndown for Des Hall’s job, along Meanwhile my first story appeared on the stands. More important than my being came a man named Stanley G. Weinbaum, with the most marvelously invented yams about immortal for a month was that Hitler and Mussolini promptly launched an attack on the the most lovable Martians and things that readers loved so much that S&S had to drop its Rhineland and Ethiopia. anti-Semitism. John Campbell also put me on a first-name basis and told me to use my Now Astounding was nominally edited by F. Orlin Tremaine, but Des Hall was the name, which I very thankfully did. actual editor. And one day Des was promoted to editor of Mademoiselle; so Tremaine found So, as I was saying, I was shuffling through the rain and there was this song I was himself with 3 million words to read for Astounding over a weekend. Instead of going subvocalizing about walking between the raindrops ... hey, how about that for a story! I had through the manuscripts, however, he hurried to the Tombs to get an astrological reading it half worked out by the time I reached John’s office—only, after I hit him with it, he from an imprisoned fortune teller named Evangeline Adams, the leading astrologist of the vetoed inverted ionization as the reason water wouldn’t touch my hero. He wanted a pure day. He had to wait while Wall Street men crowded into her cell. I don’t know what she told fantasy with maybe a water gnome to put a curse on the protagonist. Now why would he him, but—here it gets a little complicated. want a fantasy when he’s putting out an sf magazine? Well, that was his business, not mine. I was writing under the name of Clyde Crane Campbell. (The other Campbell, John All right, a supernatural curse. But why? And how it is gotten rid of? W. Jr., wasn’t well known enough at the time to make it seem an unlikely name for me.) I wrote it, finally, as “Trouble with Water” and found myself famous. But why did The reason? Anti-semitism had spread all through the world and it permeated Street & Campbell want fantasy? Because he needed stories for his new magazine, Unknown, and I Smith, so I knew better than to write under my own name. When Des was promoted, he was in the first issue! recommended me as his successor on Astounding. I was turned down because of my You can’t imagine the impact Unknown had on its writers. I, for one, dropped sf and religion. If you think I was angry, you should have heard Des! joyfully turned out fantasies—nothing but fantasies—for the next two years. They included I never sold a single word to Tremaine, but that wasn’t entirely his fault. I had run “Warm, Dark Places,” “Day Off,” and the biggest hit of all, “None But Lucifer.” out of good sf ideas and he didn’t know and cared even less how to get them out of me, as “Trouble With Water” has been reprinted so many times and in so many languages Hall had. So I became book reviewer for Mlle, at a fat $15 a month—and couldn’t get review that I long ago lost count. I have a contract to rewrite “None But Lucifer.” The deadline is books from the publishers—they told me to come back when Mlle, was established! October 1952. One of these days I may actually do it, though the book publisher gave up, Consequently I had to rewrite reviews from the New York Times and Herald-Tribune, which years ago, trying to get it out of me. This is one of the reasons the U.N. should pay me a turned out to be a bad notion. My column was dropped. I wrote one story for Mlle, under hundred thousand—well, fifty thousand—a year not to do anything major, like writing a the name of Julian Graey (I had tried Grey, then Gray, and finally combined them.) It was a novel. What if I wrote it and started World War III? This is the kind of thing that makes a cockeyed comedy in the vein of the wild humor of the Thirties. And that was that. man hesitate. I had no choice, I returned home. Saturdays I sold shoes for $4 a day and would have Well, I finally did a short sf piece in between fantasies and tried it on John. He worked more had there been enough business to warrant it. Came summer, I was a wanted fantasies from me. So I gave it to Mort Weisinger, editor of Thrilling Wonder. It was professional drowner. The city was threatening to lay off lifeguards on stretches of beach about the first man to land on Mars, and he was such a complete heel and opportunist, that were officially safe—where nobody drowned or had to be rescued. So I would swim out wanting to turn his fame into money, that the equivalent of NASA fired him off again to beyond the ropes and thrash around until the guard on the beach saved me. I had to be Mars, to get rid of him. Mort, never one to leave well enough alone, wanted it turned into a carried to the nearest first-aid station and revived. Thinking up a new name and address for tear-jerker, so I, never one to turn down a sale, wrote a four-handkerchief story called, each drowning took some doing, but it want’t that that ended my career. The last guard had simply enough, “Hero.” It was a dog, a real stinker, but it sold—and it got Mort to sell me to dived to rescue me—and laid his head open on the catamaran and I had to pull him in. I the publisher of Thrilling Wonder as Mort’s assistant. My first editorial job! How about that? couldn’t go from hero to victim again, and that was the end of my easy $1.50 per drowning. I’ll tell you about that. It paid $30 a week, which wasn’t quite enough to support a Three years passed, years of hunting for work, finding very little, and trying to write wife and, eventually, a child, and it was so mechanical that two years of it destroyed the over my family’s renewed objections. I can’t blame them. It was terribly discouraging. pleasure of editing. I came to it with the most exalted feelings, and left it with all style and And then came John W. Campbell Jr., new editor of Astounding. I got a splendid pride completely gone. letter from him about a story I had dispiritedly written. It was a lackluster creation about a I went to an editor of two fact-detective magazines, the stuff commonly called true man and a dog getting their identities switched, and their attempts to get the villain, a detective, set them up in business as managing editor, then resigned to write a million words surgeon, to switch them back again. The real problem, wrote Campbell, was a year of these and other such magazines. It got so I couldn’t look another rape in the face. I communication—how could the man in the dog’s body convey his predicament to someone turned to comic books, writing as many as four scripts a week. Now THAT paid! And so did who could help him? I spent two months on the story but Campbell bought it, retitled it radio. By that time, I’d teamed up with Ken Crossen and we were on our way to the “A Matter of Form” and ran it as his first Nova story. It was disastrous financially, but it top—when I got drafted. 6 7 I spent two years and a bit more as a combat engineer in the Pacific, and when I got Suddenly, writers and artists offered us everything they were turning out, and many out, Crossen had disintegrated. The markets we had developed were gone, and he left his of the greats came out of retirement to join us. It was a wonderful time to be alive. And in wife and three children to escape to the west coast just ahead of the income tax, labor the unbelievable space of five issues, Galaxy was in the black! officials and the postal serivce, disguised with a beard and dark glasses, and with a girl of 21. Just in case you think I’m paranoid about being a historical Typhoid Mary, consider Well, that was the last I saw of Ken. It was 1946 and I still had the same wife and a this—only months after Galaxy was bom, the Korean War started! son, and I couldn’t get back to writing. So I had to find something else. Paper became impossible to buy at any price. Our printer had set us up with a It turned out to be exporting rebuilt bookbinding machinery. I knew as much about contract with a mill—or so we thought. It turned out he had the contract, not us, and we them as I did about engineering. Which was zero, except for pushing and pulling and hauling were forced to look elsewhere. I went through the yellow pages and called every printer I pieces of bridges together, and road grading—from the position of D-handle shovel operator. found, asking if we could hook up with them. The only one who said yes was a printing Even the infantry had pitied us poor combat engineers. Anyhow, I made a lot of money in broker named Robert M. Guinn, who had followed Galaxy’s astonishing rise toward first the bookbinding machinery business before it dried up. place with considerable awe. By that time, I was ready to go back to writing. But what? Unknown had folded, and The paper was more like a blotter than newsprint, but we missed only one issue in I didn’t want to go back to sf for the very reason Des Hall had spelled out—it was too much switching printers. And we came to be great friends with Bob Guinn, of which more later. work for too little dough. So I turned again to the comic books and soon worked my way Now back to Lombi. He was in the U.S. on a visitor’s visa, not allowed to work here up to the highest-paid writer in the field—and collapsed. I did, not the field. or be paid by Galaxy. One day he was called down to Washington by the Immigration Dept, I was doing my best to recover when a girl who had worked for Ken and me called me and shown all of a letter but the signature—which stated that he was a dirty Italian in to present a publishing program to a French-Italian publishing firm, named, in translation, communistic fascist who ought to be sent back where he came from. Affidavits and appeals World Editions. failed. He was sent back to Italy, his visa withdrawn. It seems they had a big slick magazine in France and Italy that was selling two or I still don’t know who sent that letter, but it’s no coincidence that as soon as Lombi three million copies a week. A cross between beautifully executed comics and confession was out of the country, internal warfare developed between the American, French and stories, less beautifully executed, it was dubbed Fascination and set loose on the American Italian offices of World Editions. We had an ex-music publisher as president of the American public with a huge advertising program. There were five issues—the last sold 5% of its print office, who had been hired just as he was about to lock his door and declare bankruptcy, order of several hundred thousand, or was it a million? I forget. Anyhow, they were too and a circulation director. I had told Lombi at the outset to call in all unsold copies of stubborn to get out of the American market with such a beating, and so I was asked to Galaxy’s first yeai—and the president and the circulation manager got hold of them and submit a publishing program. stuffed their garages with these soon-to-be-priceless copies of the magazine. Then strange I surveyed the entire magazine market. It was early 1950, and everywhere I looked, things happened to our sales. Readers wrote in that they couldn’t find it on any newsstand magazines were in deep trouble. As soon as paper rationing had ended in 1946, everyone anywhere. who could read—or could hire someone to read—was putting out everything from comics to The upshot was that the Riviera guy sent the head of the French office to New York fashion magazines. The one exception was science fiction. to find out what went wrong. To make a short story of all this, the Frenchman cabled back On the basis of experience, I should have submitted anything but an sf magazine, a to the Riviera that the magazine was a dud and should immediately be sold—to the fantasy magazine projected for later, once the sf one was established, and a series of American president and the circulation director, and their price was $3,000.1 got in touch paperback sf novels. But I saw that Astounding was going off into one cult after hurriedly with Lombi and told him of this. The time in Rome was 4:30 a.m., but Lombi got anothei—John Campbell was rushing up dead ends, the latest being dianetics, in his search up and raced to the Riviera. The publisher instantly sent a cable stopping negotiations and for a meaningful universe—and Fantasy & Science Fiction was brand new, and flying in the followed up with another visit by Lombi to take care of the matter. face of the single immutable law of those fields: that readers don’t like fantasy in their sf, or I was told by the two American scoundrels that I was part of the deal, but I wasn’t sf in their fantasy. A very high-grade sf magazine could fit right between them. And thus I having any. Lombi arrived by plane and we began looking for a better buyer. A number of offered my publishing program to the Italian representative of World Editions, a great guy outfits here were interested, but, as I said, we were becoming great friends with the printing named Lombi. He offered it to the publisher who lived on the Riviera, who much have broker, Bob Guinn, and I got him to make a bid. I don’t know how much, but Lombi made flipped a coin, because neither he nor Lombi knew anything at all about sf or fantasy, and it the sale with the Riviera man’s blessing—and no sooner had Guinn bought it than the inside came up yes. job became clear to Lombi. The distribution pattern had been deliberately loused up—by I gave them a choice between Galaxy and If. I liked both titles, but I left the decision shipping Galaxy all over the South, where there was practically nobody interested in sf and to Lombi and his boss on the Riviera. They, in turn, didn’t know what a galaxy was, and If into hamlets all over the North and West. seemed to them too short, and they left the choice to me. So I and our art director, Lombi called his boss and told him of this sabotage, and the boss told Lombi to buy Washington Irving van der Poel (Van for short), talked over possible cover layouts—and my back the magazine from Guinn. Guinn gave him his price. Lombi was aghast—but this is four present wife’s (Nicky’s) first husband, a great calligrapher, designed the lettering. Harry times as much as you paid! Guinn grinned and told him he, Guinn, knew what he was Harrison lent us his apartment to display the many variations of both Galaxy and If, which a buying, whereas World Editions hadn’t known what they were selling. Lombi went home, large number of people, including writers, artists, and readers, were asked to vote on. but not in dishonor. I hated to see him go. We’d had a fine relationship. Curiously, almost all wrote on their secret ballots that they personally liked Galaxy But Bob Guinn was equally good to work for. He left policies, decisions and rates up and an inverted-L layout, but each thought nobody else would. That was good enough for to me, and involved me in distribution and advertising problems. I mention advertising us—Galaxy it was and the inverted-L layout won. So did Crome-Cote, the closest printing because once World Editions had, over my protests, run a back cover ad for a book called paper to photographic glossies, which I had asked for pretty urgently for our cover stock. Confessions of a French Chambermaid and we’d lost 10,000 readers for the three months of Despite its high cost and difficulty of handling, I got what I asked for. the contract. Galaxy went to the top of the field, after that, never to lose ground. The fact is that I got every single thing I wanted, from word rates to rights. The going And then came Beyond Fantasy Fiction. It was beautiful—for 10 wonderful issues. By rate was a top of two cents a word—I got the price up to three cents minimum, four cents or then we had learned that there just wasn’t a big enough audience to support a fantasy more for steady contributors, plus $100 for short-shorts. And we bought first serial rights magazine, so it died just as Unknown had, a decade before, of financial malnutrition. It was only. a shame to see it go. If Beyond had come first, I think it would have had the same effect and 8 Continued on Page 17 9 Coming Events August February 1974 31-Sept. 3 TORCON 2 at the Royal York Hotel, Toronto. GoH: Robert Bloch, 15-18 BALTICON at the Lord Baltimore Fan GoH: Bill Rotsler, Toastmaster: Hotel, Baltimore, Md. Reg: $3 advance, Lester del Rey. Reg: $10. For info: $4 at door SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES TORCON 2, P.O. Box 4, Station K, 15-18 INTERNATIONAL STAR TREK Department of English Toronto, Canada CONVENTION 1974 at the Hotel Indiana State University Americana, NYC. Reg: $4 advance, Terre Haute, Indiana 47809 September $7.50 after Jan. 20, $3 supporting. For info: P.O. Box 3127, NYC 10008 Subscription to the 4 parts of Volume 1 (Spring 1973, 14-17 SFRA ANNUAL CONFERENCE on Fall 1973, Spring 1974, Fall 1974) is $5.00, “The Writer and Science Fiction” at April Edited by R.D. Mullen and Darko Suvin. Penn State. For info: Dean Arthur Lewis or Prof. Philip Klass, c/o 410 Keller SFS publishes articles resulting from the study of sci Bldg, University Park, Pa. 16802 12-15 T YNECON ’74 in ence fiction —including utopian fiction, but not, except Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England. GoH: for purposes of comparison and contrast, supernatural or October Bob Shaw. Reg: 50p supporting, to: Ian mythological fantasy. Articles intended for publication Williams, 6 Greta Terrace, Chester Rd, in SFS should be written in English, accompanied by an 5-7 BOUCHERCON IV at the Sunderland, County Durham, SR4 7RD, Sheraton-Boston. Adv. reg: $4 to Sept. abstract of fewer than 200 words, and submitted in two England 1, $6 thereafter. For info: Bouchercon, copies conforming generally to the MLA style sheet. 12-14 LUNACON at the Statler Hilton Box 113, Melrose, Mass. 02176 Hotel, NYC. GoH: Forrest J Ackerman. IN VOLUME 1, PART 1 (NOW READY) 27-28 MILEHICON V at the Sheraton Inn, For info: Walter Cole, 1171 E. 8th St, David N. Samuelson. On Clarke ’s Childhood's End. 3535 Quebec St, Denver. GoH: Gordon Brooklyn, N.Y. 11230 Patrick Parrinder. Imagining the Future: Zamyatin, Wells. Dickson, Fan GoH: Devra Langsam. Stanislaw Lem. The Structural Analysis of Science Fiction. Reg: $2 attending, $3 nonattending. For August info: Carol Angel, 2885 S. Raleigh St, Marc Angenot. Jules Verne and French Literary Criticism. Denver 80236 Robert M. Philmus. The Shape of SF: On Bailey's Pilgrims, 25-30 EUROCON 2 / SFANCON 5 in Green's Into Other Worlds, and Moscowitz's Explorers. November Brussels, Belgium. Reg: $10 attending, Ursula K. Le Guin. On Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream. $5.50 supporting. American agents: Darko Suvin. The Significant Context of SF: A Dialogue 9-11 PHILCON at the Marriot Motor Locus, 3400 Ulloa St, San Francisco, of Comfort Against Tribulation. Hotel, City Line Ave & Monument Rd, Calif. 94116 Philadelphia, Pa. 19131. GoH: A. E. Van 29-Sept. 2 DISCON II at the IN COMING ISSUES Vogt. Reg: $3 Sheraton-Park Hotel, 2660 Woodley James Blish and Franz Rottensteiner . Change, Marxism, and 23-25 FILM-CON 2 at the Hyatt Regency Road, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008. SF: An Exchange of Views. Hotel, Los Angeles. Reg: $10 attending, GoH: Roger Zelazny, Fan GoH: Jay Kay David Ketterer. SF in the Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan $5 supporting. For info: Film-Con 2, Klein. Reg: $5 attending, $3 supporting. Poe: A Chronological Survey. P.O. Box 74866, Los Angeles, Calif. For info: Discon II, P.O. Box 31127, Robert Plank. Quixote's Mills: The Man-Machine Encounter. 90004 Washington, D.C. 20031 Robert G. Clouse. On Armytage's Yesterday's Tomorrows. Information supplied in this list is the latest available to us, including all changes received prior to closing date. Stanislaw Lem. The Time-Travel Story. Franz Rottensteiner. Playing with Creation: Philip Josd Farmer . David Y. Hughes and Robert M. Philmus. Wells's Early Science Journalism. An annotated list of unreprinted articles, including a number not previously attributed. Peter Ohlin. The Dilemma of SF Film Criticism. R.D. Mullen. The Books of John Taine and Eric Temple Bell: A Chronological Survey.
11 Epstein, Perle Monsters: Their Histories, Steele, Mary Q. The First of the Penguins. Coming Attractions Homes and Habits. Oct. $4.95 Oct. $4.95 ANALOG - - October Harrison, Harry, ed. SF: Author’s Choice Bright, Robert Georgie Goes West. Oct. 3. N2400. 95tf $4.50 Thomas Nelson Serial Cooper, Edmund The Overman Culture. Carr, Terry, ed. Into the Unknown: Eleven The Far Call, by Gordon R. Dickson S2421. 75^ Dutton Tales of Imagination. $6.50 Novelette Manning Sanders, Ruth A Book of Ogres Silverberg, Robert, ed. Chains of the Sea: Whalekiller Grey, by William E. DAW AUGUST TITLES and Trolls. $4.95 Three Original Novellas. $6.50 Cochrane Alexander, Lloyd The Cat Who Wished to Akers, Alan Burt Warrior of Scorpio. Be a Man. $4.95 Rand McNally Short Stories Elwood, Roger, ed. Science Fiction Tales: UQ1065. 95tf Notes from Magdalen More, by L*z*r*s Farrar Straus Invaders, Creatures and Alien Worlds. Anvil, Christopher Pandora’s Planet. L*ng Segal, Lore, tr. 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Oct. $5.95 $5.95 12 13 and Rita Hayworth denoted treachery and evil, can be said to like women. But for the S F and the Cinema 1960’s horror film, the relevant Welles item is his 1958 Touch of Evil. In this picture, the VAL LEWTON: A PROFILE AND A BOOK REVIEW baffling touch was not the tricky camerawork, but the complete abuse of the heroine, Janet Leigh. Only afterwards, did the hero track down the villain. Touch was a commercial bomb. by Mark Purcell But Alfred Hitchcock gambled a TV-production budget (comparable to Lewton’s RKO Entirely during WWII, between the production summers of 1942 and 1945, RKO financing) in 1960 on Psycho, that the audience’s only complaint was that Welles didn’t studio produced eleven B-budget programmers for the cheap horror film market. Their quite show what the motorbike gang in Touch was actually doing to Janet Leigh. Hitchcock producer and anonymous final-rewrite man was Vai Lewton. Lewton was a trainee and even hired her for the same victimized part. Since Psycho’s smash success, the horror flunky of the only big independent producer really active during the depression, David O. film—to quote C. S. Lewis—has come to reside in Giant the Jack-Killer’s world. The Selznick. With Selznick, he learned how to give a B budget an A’s sheen and class. Also, in ‘conservative’ American audience has turned explicitly fascist. A responsible, patriarchal, the opinion of his wife and other expert witnesses, from Selznick he took a moral beating protective male lead is beyond its imaginative grasp. that inhibited his making his weight felt later with his fellow studio bosses, once he had This contemporary commercial horror audience wants to beat up-kill-rape somebody become an executive producer himself. who is guaranteed to be too weak to fight back. There has never been a mass audience like From the premiere (12/42) of his first production, Cat People, the Lewton pictures this before in America. (For one thing, it’s loaded with college degrees, like the porno film were recognized as a separate, individual contribution to the horror-fantasy film. Titles and audience uncovered by statistical surveys.) This sadistic psychosis is what Lewton’s films some other production information, I give later. But I want to presume here on the general specifically resist, in their casting and plotting. In his whole series, there is only one popularity with LUNA readers, especially after their TV reruns, of Cat, of I Walked With a kill-the-girls film, Leopard Man, 1943. According to Siegel, Lewton at once recognized his Zombie, Isle of the Dead, Body Snatcher and the other seven. Only recently, for instance, ‘mistake’—by his standards, not Welles’ nor Hitchcock’s—and deliberately avoided repeating I’ve been running off a series of teleprints of famous thirties-forties’ American films for a it. thesis-article project. The most worn, used, seen print is a Lewton, yet it is the only B title Otherwise in the RKO series, the dreamy, sleepwalking heroine traditional to the in my series, the only film shot with no stars. horror film (for example, Simone Simon in Cat) is always contrasted with some adult, It’s pleasant but therefore not surprising that there is lately in print a literate, intelligent, ‘contemporary’ girl, a career woman usually. These contrasting types compete informative study of Lewton for Viking’s “Cinema One” series: Vai Lewton: The Reality of for the hero as sexual equals. The ‘modem’ girl usually wins. Lewton would never have Terror, by Joel Siegel. With Siegel’s book as a general data bank to support our mutual accepted the late-fifties’ assumption of Hitchcock’s own Sleeping Princess film, Vertigo, that knowledge of the films themselves, I want to present a few propositions about them. Quite the bright Barbara Bel Geddes was disqualified by her brains from competing sexually with consciously, Lewton was at war with the regular horror film tradition, the the characterless, busty Barby doll acted by Kim Novak. But by the late fifties the male Chaney-Karloff-Kong-Whale genre that preceded his reign at RKO and that has been revived movie audience wanted a sterile lay. A realistic young wife-and-mother type laid adult in the sixties. Paradoxically, when Karloff was foisted on Lewton by the RKO bosses with a responsibilities, on them, unwanted in their movie dreams. By 1973, every abortion 3-picture contract, the two men got along well on and off the set. Lewton simply shot three questionnaire showed more American men than women voting pro. realistic historical films. He used his antiquarianism to dress up the B sets. Karloff was (a) The adult heroine appears in all Lewton’s films and becomes the official theme of his literate enough to appreciate his new boss and (b) had enough acting range to play three final RKO picture, the coda for the whole series. (At the time of production, he knew he dimensional costume characters. He could enter into Lewton’s special fantasy world. How was leaving the studio.) Anna Lee, the heroine of Bedlam (1946), is trapped into an 18th different this mental world is from the horror ‘revival’ of the sixties, you can guess from a century mental asylum. Since its operator is Karloff, the potentialities of the situation in a few items in Lewton’s private production code: no real monsters; literacy; don’t abuse the 1930 or 1973 movie are. predictable. But in Lewton’s script, the girl retains her moral girls. stability and even becomes a moral rallying point for her fellow patients. After her rescue, MONSTERS: with his first film, Cat People, it’s immediately obvious that Lewton’s Karloff himself is trapped by the other inmates. They put him on formal trial for his abuses. horrors are psychic, not demoniac. The villain is ‘us,’ not ‘they.’ This theme is most fully Once again, a sadistic Freaks-style ending seems imminent. The audience is to get the ‘moral’ developed in Cat’s sequel, the 1944 Curse. A traditional murder plot is here buried under a thrill of seeing the official villain tortured. But instead, to defy Karloff’s own degradation of consideration of a child’s fantasy world. The film’s real ‘villains’ are not the potential them, the inmates deliberately give him a fair trial and acquit him!—a steal from “Devil and murderess (she no doubt helped sell the script to Lewton’s bosses), but rather the child’s Daniel Webster”? Karloff is finally killed off, to satisfy the ritual expectations of the ‘normal,’ imagination-fearing parents. Lewton thus presumed an adult moral universe. ‘Evil’ audience and of Lewton’s producer. But the murder is so staged as to (a) surprise the isn’t only what gets you arrested. Child-raising is more than saying, “don’t.” A wartime mass audience and (b) resist any ‘moral’ feeling that his assassination is somehow a ‘just’ act that audience accepted these ideas (perhaps encouraged by exploitation titles and by the horror should give the audience complacency and pleasure. veneer). Today there are many young moviemakers technically as talented as Lewton (though not as educated). But the moral breakdown of the American middle class may have TITLES, RELEASE DATES, DIRECTORS, OTHER COMMENTS: Dec. 1942, Cat People. cost them his old mass audience. 1943: April, I Walked with a Zombie; May, Leopard Man; Sept., 7th Victim; Dec., Ghost Anybody who has taught or even lived in a Silent Majority neighborhood, has Ship. 1944: March, Curse of the Cat People; August, Mademoiselle Fifi; Sept., Youth Runs experienced the parental breakdown in values, the sellout to school, church, police, any Wild (the juvenile delinquency film). 1945: May, The Body Snatcher; Sept., Isle of the outside force which will control the kids and provide their disciplinary values, so Pa and Ma Dead. April 1946, Bedlam. can sit and watch TV. ‘Sin’ is illegality, nothing more. I.e., don’t get caught, you brats. Before his death a few years later, Lewton produced three more films, non-horror, all Interestingly, Lewton made a wartime-delinquency movie about this very problem of equally unimportant, for Paramount, MGM and Universal-International: My Own True parental values and controls. Love, 1948; Please Believe Me, 1950; Apache Drums, 1951. For the rest of this essay, forget As for the movie war against women, this had begun in the world of the A-budget them: back to RKO. film, far above Lewton’s head, at least as far back as 1941, with Maltese Falcon and Welles’ The first three Lewtons at RKO were directed by Jacques Tourneur, himself the son Citizen Kane. Orson Welles, very influential in Hollywood, however ‘uncommercial,’ was a of a famous silent director. These three were so successful commercially that Tourneur was conspicuous cinematic misogynist. No man for whom such amiable girls as Marion Davies then appointed an A-feature director. His salary became impractical for the production 14 15 budget of a Lewton B film. So the later pictures were directed by his cutter, Mark Robson, thematic. It occurs when he, his directors or his writers, are inspired to soak the film’s or by Robert Wise. As one of the old Orson Welles team, Wise existed on the RKO lot at the background with thematic allusions. Even poor old Leopard Man becomes authentic time in disgrace by previous association with the ‘uncommercial’ Welles. Wise was first Lewton, alas too late, when the fleeing New Mexican murderer joins the ritual penitent brought in (1944) for Curse of the Cat People, to replace a new emigr£ director who froze monks to escape pursuit; and his detectors in turn join the chanting march. Suddenly a up on the set and hence couldn’t maintain B-production speed. For all three regular junky B becomes the most adult film of 1943. (Welles’ worst film, Confidential Report/Mr. directors, the Lewton films were showcases. Each became a postwar A-feature man. Their Arkadin, later made an attempt to lift this scene—artistically unsuccessful, though Welles current Hollywood ranking (descending order), based on their post-Lewton work, would be: used real monks!) Wise-Toumeur-Robson. But in terms of the style of Lewton’s scripts and of the general Both for better and worse, the Lewton films are examples of WWII media liberalism. romantic, Selznick-y style of the Hollywood forties, Tourneur was No. 1. At least, Siegel They presume the values of our more educated power class at that time. So in Curse the thinks so. pretend-games of the child-heroine are ‘fantasy’—opposed to liberal ‘reality’—and the None of Lewton’s actors was springboarded by him as were his directors. The best parents’ evil consists in being non-permissive and nonunderstanding. That the child is simply cast film, perhaps because of a larger budget, is probably the last, Bedlam’s being conceptually interesting and the parents, conceptually lazy, is an illiberal formula Lee-Karloff-Henry Daniell team. (Lugosi appears unimportantly, a throwaway bit as a draw unacceptable to the movie’s makers. for the horror market.) Daniell may have been the greatest villain in American pictures, the When Kent Smith during Cat begins complaining at work to another girl about his peer of Rathbone, Chaney and early Lee Marvin. But his best parts were in Garbo’s Camille Slavic bride, this translates in the liberal codebook—see James Agee’s Nation review—as and Chaplin’s Great Dictator. For the regular run of his films, Lewton maintained the usual sexual maturity. Smith is seeking a buddy-wife, the high school counselor’s marital ideal. On stock company, which included Tom Conway, “The Falcon,” and a yachting friend, Alan the other hand, the glib solution ending of Youth Runs Wild is not Lewton’s fault. The Napier. It was presumably no help to Lewton’s casting that his films were employed by studio reshot his film. RKO as final-picture writeoffs on the contracts of actors leaving the lot. For the 1973 reader, Joel Siegel plays down this veneer of glib wartime-liberal In the opinion of some serious critics, including Manny Farber, Lewton employed enlightenment. He presents the eleven films as tugs of war between rationalism and staid actors who were directed boringly. The truth is more complex. The moral interest of irrationalism. The final outburst of madness and violence at the end of each film means that his films’ plots rests with bright pretty heroines who behave and think as adults. If you irrationalism has won. Probably Siegel is giving a suitable sales talk for our new power class, compare one of Lewton’s girls with some A actress of his period, you see the problem is not sunk in horse, grass, beads, astrology and the first economic depression in the country to that his lack competence or attractiveness. produce massive inflation. But to take Siegel’s own illustration, the killings at the end of His prettiest heroine, Frances Dee (Zombie’s nurse), had dropped out of films in the Zombie, these deaths are mutually convenient for the ‘nice’ characters. And nearly all the thirties (a) to run a ranch and raise children for her actor-husband, Joel McCrea and (b) other Lewtons have these ‘safe’ endings, however blood-chilling their main content. because her adult, intelligent type of personality became uncommercial with male producers However, if you are a Lewton bug, forget my disputativeness. Buy Siegel. For one thing, he after the early thirties. (I have in mind such other girls as Madge Evans and the early has located a print of Ghost Ship (1943, now in legal limbo). His book provides a full Katherine Hepburn.) If you compare Dee’s nurse with that of a similar actress, Deborah description of the one ‘lost’ Lewton. Kerr, doing a similar type in a modem thriller, Jack Clayton’s 1961 Innocents, you see how much more off-balanced the modem thriller heroine is expected to become by the script of GOLD ON GOLD continued from Page 9 her part. same misty memories as Unknown. Take another post-Lewton A thriller showcasing an actress, David Miller’s 1952 After we had vacated the title If in 1950, Jim Quinn put it out, but couldn’t keep it Sudden Fear with Joan Crawford. The film is successful as a whole, but there is one rich going. And so I got both titles to edit. This was more than an extra job for me—it enabled moment of unconscious humor early in it. Jack Palance finds our Joan in her private train me to buy stories that weren’t up to Galaxy’s standards and thus keep writers happy, as well compartment reading a book as only Joan Crawford could read a book. By contrast, the as giving me the chance I’d never before had of bringing new ones up to Galaxy. whole point of Lewton’s films is that they create a context where literacy, intelligence and As for the Galaxy sf novel reprints—they weren’t handled right as packages, being skill are taken for granted, no theatrical fuss about it. That Frances Dee or Jane Randolph more like numbered magazines than paperbacks. I got that go-ahead just as the paperback (in Cat) are intelligent, skilled, observant people, is accepted by the audience. One more market broke, but it was too late. example: because Simone Simon could sketch, the script of Cat was deliberately revised to All this was from 1950 to 1961, eleven memorable years. What happened to me then? show off her skill. In Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Bel Geddes’ sketching skill denotes her sexual I had been in a disastrous car crash that finally wore me down to 126 pounds and eventually inferiority to Kim Novak. into the hospital with a poor chance of my ever being able to walk again. I was there for a Lewton simply had different moral-intellectual attitudes than the usual long time, till my weight was back to normal and the crippling cured. producer-director in the horror field. Because his movies have been so popular, so widely So, if you remember, I remarried and the big buildup came to South Vietnam. I’m shown, I’ve ignored discussing his most famous visual effects. In the narrow technical sense, not ecstatically happy about being retired, but there is nothing I can do about it. I surface his ideas infiltrated A films. The ideas of the bastard-hero producer in Minelli’s 1952 Bad with an occasional story. The rest of the time I count my blessings—and there are many—a and the Beautiful are Lewton’s. (The ‘hero’s’ characterization however owes more to his old wonderful, beautiful wife and a beautiful, wonderful stepdaughter, and your friendship. boss, Selznick.) In the technical sense, his main technical device is ambivalence: making the Would I go back to editing? Never, for two reasons. I haven’t the youth and vigor to audience anticipate danger with something ‘innocent,’ and then vice versa. When his RKO entice and coax the best stories out of the best writers against the damnable deadlines. boss forced him to use a real, drugged leopard in the drafting room scene in Cat, Lewton Second, I think the day of magazines is coming to an end, science fiction in particular. They and Tourneur simply shot it so that the audience could not be positive it saw a real cat! can’t compete with all the series anthologies there are for two more reasons. The anthologies What interested Lewton was the human psyche, not the animals and imaginary monsters like pay better rates and in addition add royalties. Second, they can be left on the newsstands poor Kong to which the audience wished to transfer its fears and guilt. indefinitely and in more places than magazines, including supermarkets. Thematically (not artistically), the most adult Lewtons like Curse and Bedlam But I wouldn’t take a million cruzeiros for the memories I have of being about as therefore concern mental illness or disturbance. And certainly these ‘adult’ pictures are good an editor in those 11 years as John Campbell was in his great years from 1938 to 1941. superior to the less original, bloody horrors of, say, Leopard Man. But echt-Lewtonism is That took some doing. And nothing could induce me to do it again. 16 It wouldn’t be safe for the world, would it? 17 New Books TIME. Lancer 74536, July. 75^ MEANS TO ME (repr) Signet Q5504, Asimov, Isaac, ed. STORIES SELECTED June. 95tf HARDCOVERS Levin, Ira THE STEPFORD WIVES (marg, FROM THE HUGO WINNERS, v.2. Farmer, Philip Jose THE BOOK OF repr, large print ed) G. K. HaU. $4.95 Fawcett P1880, August. $1.25 PHILIP JOSE FARMER (coll) DAW Beckford, William VATHEK (fty, facs Manners, Alexandra, pseud. THE STONE Berlitz, Charles MYSTERIES FROM FOR UQ1063, July. 95«! repr) Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, MAIDEN (supemat) Putnam, May. GOTTEN WORLDS (nf, repr) Dell 6214, Faulkner, Nancy WITCHES BREW (super- 1972. $30.00 $6.95 June. $1.25 nat) Curtis 09203, August. 95tf Berger, Thomas REGIMENT OF WOMEN. Manning, Al G. HELPING YOURSELF Blish, James STAR TREK 9. Bantam Gerber, Richard UTOPIAN FANTASY: A Simon & Schuster. $8.95 WITH WHITE WITCHCRAFT. Parker SP7808, August. 75^ Study of English Utopian Fiction Since Berlitz, Charles MYSTERIES FROM FOR Pub. Co., 1972. $6.95 Brunner, JOhn THE WRONG END OF the End of the Nineteenth Century. GOTTEN WORLDS (nf) Doubleday, MARS AND THE MIND OF MAN (nf, TIME (repr) DAW UQ1061, July. 95<£ McGraw Hill, July. $2.45 1972. $8.95 essays by Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Buache, Freddy THE CINEMA OF LUIS Goldman, Lawrence Louis TAKEOVER Buchholz, Heinrich Ewald, ed. EDGAR Clarke, Bruce Murray, Carl Sagan & BUNUEL. A.S. Barnes. $2.95 (marg) Curtis 09206, August. 95tf ALLAN POE: A Centenary Tribute (facs Walter SulUvan) Harper, June. $7.95 Burroughs, Edgar Rice CAVE GIRL (re Haining, Peter, ed. THE LUCIFER repr) Folcroft Library Editions, 1972. Meredith, Richard C. AT THE NARROW issue) Ace, March. 75^ SOCIETY (supemat, repr) Signet $17.50 PASSAGE. Putnam, May. $5.95 LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (reissue) Y5568, August. $1.25 Carr, Terry, ed. AN EXALTATION OF Miller, Arthur THE CREATION OF THE Ace, March. 15
ALSO RECEIVED Bom Under Mars, by John Brunner. Ace 07161, June. 95tf (2 ptg) Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber. Award AN1143. 95tf (3 ptg) The Devil Is Alive and Well and Living in America Today, by Jason Michaels. Award AQ1137. $1.25 Escape to Witch Mountain, by Alexander Key. Archway 29572, August. 75tf (hardcover: Westminster, 1968. $3.75) Forgotten Worlds, by Robert Charroux. Walker, July. $7.95 (tr. from French) The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin. Ace 478008, Nov. 1972. 95tf (3 ptg; hardcover: Walker, 1969. $4.95. reviewed LUNA Monthly 11) Magic, Supematuralism and Religion, by Kurt Seligmann. Pantheon, Sept. $3.95 (repr of The History of Magic) Perry Rhodan 25: Snowman in Flames, by Clark Darlton. Ace 66008, June. 75tf The Sky People, by Brinsley LePoer Trench. Award AN1152. 95tf Star Guard, by Andre Norton. Ace 78131, June. 95